


Collared

by Merkwerkee



Category: Masters of the Metaverse (Web Series)
Genre: Episode: s05e06 Space Oddity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27645161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Lothar HATES magic suppressing collars with a literal burning, fiery passion





	Collared

Lothar Kaldegga _hated_ magic-suppressant collars.

He’d been forced to wear one constantly when he was young, his elemental magic strong enough from a young age to destroy houses when he got upset. The United League had provided a specially sized collar to his parents after one particularly strong tantrum had left a smoking hole in the side of their house. Lothar had regretted his outburst, begged them not to put the collar on - to no avail. His mother had locked the iron ring around his neck, kissed his cheek, and told him it was only until he was old enough to control his powers.

The collar never left his neck for the next six years.

He’d felt it against his throat every time he talked, swallowed, turned his head, or tried to sleep any other way than on his side. The other children had known what it meant, of course, which made things slightly more bearable, but - six years. Even with the gel-adjustable padding and “ultra-comfortable design,” it’d left a visible mark, a place on his neck where the skin had been worn smooth. His father had taken him to a specialist to have it corrected, determined to pretend like Lothar had never worn a collar - that he’d never been an out-of-control child instead of his parents’ meal ticket to the good life. They’d been executed years ago, of course, not long after Lothar had very publicly escaped the confines of the United League military to start a new chapter in the Resistance. It had been a very public affair, ostensibly because they had raised such a disobedient son - but he’d known better. It was a scare tactic designed to discourage others from following his example, and for almost a decade it worked.

Those six years in the collar left him with a lifetime dislike of things around his neck - which included the stiff, high collars of the United League’s formal military attire. Having as much elemental power as he did had afforded him a certain amount of leeway in the matter of attire, a thing which he took advantage of shamelessly. Unfortunately, Lothar’s power couldn’t shield him from the consequences of all of his actions, and he’d ended up in proper restraining collars a number of times during his involuntary service to the United League. They were not the comfortably padded creation of his youth, and the feeling of the circuits next to his skin cooling as they neutralized the neural signals along his elemental nervous system was something he’d grown to hate almost as much as he hated the United League for everything it had done.

He’d had to use the collars on others, of course, over the years since his escape. Lothar was pragmatic enough to know that they were sometimes a necessary evil, though his use of them tapered off over the years as he took fewer and fewer hostile elementalists captive. It was, after all, much simpler to kill them than to waste the resources it took to keep them captive. Translocationists, on the other hand, were much harder to come by and while he was never sure if the collars affected them in the same way, they still received a priority for capture if possible.

Still, no matter if Lothar was the one being collared, or doing the collaring, he _hated_ the feeling of the things. Even in their inert state they grounded and weakened the magic that was near them in a way distinctly opposite to the elemental bracers he used. They were made from the same base metal - or so he’d been told - but the collars were refined differently and acted in a directly opposite fashion. Lothar wasn’t sure which had come first, the bracers or the collars - and frankly, he didn’t care to know. All he cared was that he never wanted to wear the things again.

Which made the current situation all the more intolerable.

Bruno Hamilton was a man as orderly and pragmatic as Lothar himself, though not nearly so ruthless. The man had a strict moral compass that simply couldn’t apply to the real world, however much the man tried to make it so. Lothar knew better from years of bitter experience in fighting the galaxy-spanning power of the United League; if you gave quarter, they took a mile. Any enemies you left alive behind you would simply come back and kill good friends and skilled fighters later. Sometimes, civilian casualties were unavoidable collateral damage. It was the way things had to be, the way Lothar had fought for years, and the fact that Hamilton refused to acknowledge the fact was infuriating.

Even more infuriating was the way the man had just… _stepped in_ to his body, somehow, and taken possession of Lothar. It didn’t _feel_ like magic - none of the tricks he’d learned over the years for manipulating the basic forces of the universe seemed to help push the man aside and give Lothar control back - but he didn’t have any other words to describe it and Hamilton nearly as in the dark as he was. Their minds were so very alike, and yet.

_And yet._

Hamilton had had his own agenda - steal a warship, blow up a planetoid. It had been deceptively simple, and had gone surprisingly well; they’d stolen the warship, and then Hamilton had let Lothar loose to destroy the planetoid below them. Lothar had tried to take advantage and steal the ship to take it and destroy more tactically valuable targets - nobody cared about the monks who lived on the dustball they’d been jumped to - but his attempt had failed and Hamilton had fumbled his way through destroying the monks instead.

And now they were here; Hamilton had just removed their shared hands from the weapons systems, and voluntarily put a collar around their neck.

Lothar howled in rage at the back of their shared skull, helpless to prevent it. His hand remained steady under Hamilton’s control, and their breathing didn’t even hitch as the locking systems popped into place. Hamilton didn’t flinch as their connection to the elemental forces of the galaxy died a sudden death, and he equally calmly allowed the cyborg across from them to cuff their body as well.

Lothar thrashed against the weight that was holding him the the back of their shared mindspace, but Hamilton ignored him. Pictures of what Lothar would do to the man’s granddaughter, thoughts of destroying United League planets with the battleship, desperate thoughts of negation - all to no avail. The handcuffs closed around their shared wrists with a solid thunk, locking mechanisms ticking into place even as the cyborg quickly stripped away Lothar’s elemental gauntlets as well.

And then, between one breath and the next, Lothar Kaldegga was alone in his body once again, standing on the bridge of a warship with three bounty hunters pointing their weapons at him and a blasted collar around his neck. He did the only thing he could do.

“Void take you all!”

The bounty hunters were not impressed.


End file.
